Category Archives: mystery

Big Bad Wool by Leonie Swann

Posted on by

A murder mystery in which the detective-work is done by a flock of sheep? YMBK. And, if you’ve noticed my preference for realistic crime stories and political thrillers, you’ll probably be surprised that Big Bad Wool and its predecessor Three Bags Full were two of my favorite books of the last year—sheepy detectives notwithstanding. As testaments to the books’ appeal, Three Bags Full has been translated into more than thirty languages and is currently being made into a movie starring Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Bryan Cranston, and others. Big Bad Wool was translated from the original German by Amy Bojang.

Dark doings occur in these books, including murder. The sheep don’t perfectly understand the human world, of course, but they are observant, patient, and one of them—Miss Maple—is quite clever at putting two and two together. Part of their understanding of humankind has developed through their shepherds’ habit of reading to them each night: mysteries, romances, and, in one disturbing interlude, a text on sheep diseases.

In this story, Rebecca, their shepherdess, has taken the sheep on a long-promised trip to Europe. She lives in her caravan along with her Mum, a devotee of the Tarot, though sheep keep eating a card here or there, diminishing the deck and people’s possible fortunes. Shepherdess, Mum, and sheep are overwintering alongside a French chateau. Snow is on the meadow and ominous tracks are everywhere. Animals are being found in the forest, brutally murdered. Is a werewolf on the prowl? Rebecca worries about the safety of her sheep, and they worry about hers. The plot becomes complicated, making the story perhaps somewhat overlong, but it’s refreshing seeing the world through the eyes of the animals, and I didn’t mind.

The sheep bring distinct personalities and skills to this adventure. Aside from Miss Maple’s acknowledged cleverness, Mopple has the best memory, Othello is a born leader and learned a lot in his early days living in a zoo, Lane is the fastest runner, and the fearless winter lamb, born out of sync with the sheep calendar, hasn’t acquired a name yet and longs for one.

The sheep meadow is next to a fenced-in herd of goats. The temperamental and attitudinal differences between the species—as well as what you could call their different “skill sets”—prove most entertaining and useful. Swann (a pen name) must be exceptionally observant to render animal behavior so vividly and convincingly. Some things the sheep get wrong, and others they understand quite differently than the humans do—the value of veterinarians, for example—though they have an enviable ability to tell when a human is lying. They go about their sheepy business (mainly focused on eating) in a charming, sheepy way. I hated for this oddly comforting book to end!

P.S. When the Public Safety Writers Association decided to have a detective-themed costume event at its annual meeting last summer, you can guess mine!

On Stage: An Old-Fashioned Family Murder

Posted on by

An Old-Fashioned Family Murder, which premiered last Friday night at George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, N.J., is first-rate old-fashioned fun! This new comedy-mystery, written by Joe DiPietro and directed by Larry Raben, will be delighting audiences through November 2. It’s Tony Award-winner DiPietro’s eighth production at the Playhouse, and he and the theater clearly work beautifully together.

The play nicely echoes the whodunnit tropes and characters of the Golden Age of detective stories, starting with the secluded ritzy Claythorne mansion, isolated by a dramatic storm (lots of stage lightning and thunder). Set in 1943, the opening scenes give Arthur Whittington (played by Tony Carlin)—an insufferably pedantic and self-satisfied author of second-rate mysteries—the chance to rattle on. One of his pet themes is why a mere woman could never be a stellar detective. (Yes, you know from this point on that a woman will put him in his place).

Over the course of the evening, the two twenty-something Claythorne sisters, Dotty (Caitlin Kinnunen), who dresses like her own grandmother, and Clarice (Allison Scagliotti), the epitome of glamour, plus Clarice’s fiancé, Jasper Jamison (Michael Evan Williams), a pool boy at the country club, come to loathe the author. He plays a game of what if? that reveals all three have a motive to kill the ancient Claythorne patriarch, soundly sleeping upstairs: Dotty, because she’s treated like a servant, Clarice because Daddy objects to Jasper, and Jasper himself. When Whittington reveals he’s been invited there in order to witness a new will the old man has created—one that cuts one of the daughters out entirely—that really puts the cat among the pigeons.

Now appears the leader of Dotty’s mystery book club, Shirley Peck (Sally Struthers—yes, that one!) who has distinctly different views about lady detectives. When everyone goes to bed, a murder does occur. Again you’ll recognize the tropes of classic detective fiction, but DiPietro’s script is full of laugh-out-loud lines that make them fresh again. Police detective Paul Peck (James Taylor Odom), Mrs. Peck’s son, arrives to investigate.

Under the not-so-steely gaze of the law, the players circle each other warily. The sisters’ claws come out; the laughs do too. The doting Mrs. Peck and her somewhat bumbling son play off each other perfectly, chemistry that may in part reflect Struthers and Odom’s past stage appearances together. Struthers’s performance of a woman struggling (and mostly failing) to keep a low profile, to let her son shine, is fascinating to watch. Her gestures and expressions, no matter how small, are exactly right.

Tickets for An Old-Fashioned Family Murder are available here or by calling 732-246-7717.

The Murder Show by Matt Goldman

Posted on by

Author Matt Goldman is part of that tribe of television writers who have made a successful jump into print. These authors have in common their ability to establish steadily rising action with no lulls and visual imaginations that let them describe scenes so that readers can easily picture them. And they aren’t reluctant to deploy a little authentic humor. Goldman’s first book was nominated for a number of awards, and the new one, The Murder Show, will likely garner equal attention.

In this story, Ethan Harris is the fortyish showrunner for a television series called The Murder Show. He’s abandoned New York and arrived tonight in his home town of Minneapolis, in the hope that a different setting and atmosphere will give him a great idea for the show’s next season. It has to be good, because the show is one bad idea away from being cancelled altogether.

To his surprise, his high school best friend and almost-girlfriend Ro Greeman, still lives in the house behind his. She’s on the Minneapolis police force, as is her high school boyfriend Marty Mathis, which brings Ethan into much too much contact with his high school nemesis.

Ro has an idea for The Murder Show. Of course. Everyone does. Ethan’s heard so many of these he’s initially skeptical, but over time, her idea grows on him. She wants him to recreate the mysterious death of their friend Ricky O’Shea, killed in a hit-and-run on a rural road after his car broke down. Maybe the show would prompt someone who knows something to come forward, even after all this time. And, she eventually reveals, his isn’t the only such fatality in the area. If Ro hadn’t noticed a recent case so similar to Ricky’s, she wouldn’t have recognized the pattern.

Although Ro’s idea could reflect wanting to spend time with Ethan or be a way to get help outside official channels—whichever—Ethan proves himself a resourceful partner. And she needs one!

The quick-witted, teasing banter between Ethan and the women in the story deserves mention, because it rings true. That’s another thing television writers can do (the good ones, that is). They can write believable dialog.

Though much of the story takes place in urban Minneapolis, the trips to the rural areas, past and present, are well described. Fast-paced at both the plot and character development levels, this book is one a great many readers will enjoy. I certainly did.

Sign up for my “best of” quarterly newsletter with this link and receive a free pdf of three award-winning short stories.

A Murderous Reading Vacation–Right in Your Own Back Yard

Posted on by

So your friends are off to the Jersey Shore or Thailand or the Maritime Provinces. You can have your own exciting vacation right from the ol’ lounge chair. Here are five recent crime stories that will give you a taste of sea, sand, and foreign climes.

Pele’s Prerogative by Albert Tucher
If a Hawai`i vacation is just what you need, you’ll find plenty of local color to make you think you’ve vacationed in that island paradise. Pele, you’ll recall, is the goddess of volcanoes and fire who created the Hawaiian Islands. The flowing lava creates lava tubes, akin to cave systems. Seventy-three-year-old Langston Otsaka, is found dead at the bottom of a lava tube in his back yard, and the wound on the back of his head suggests it wasn’t an accidental. Read my full review here.

Runaway Horses by the Italian literary duo Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini
Lawyer Enzo Maggioni and his wife Valeria, traveling to Siena, encounter a violent hailstorm, take a wrong turn, and end up at an enormous villa, where they remain guests for several days. They’ve arrived shortly before Siena’s August Palio, a centuries-old event in which horses race three laps around the town’s Piazza del Campo. The competition is vigorous and not always fair. Then there’s the dead jockey in the library. My full review is here.

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch
This story sneaks up on you and before long has its claws in you good and solid. From the moment Evie Gordon walks up to her clients’ quirky Southern California mansion and finds the front door wide open, you know she’s about to uncover something better avoided. A young woman is tied up inside, and Evie’s employers are dead. When suspicion falls on the two women, they go on the run across the US—a 2025 Thelma and Louise. Here’s the full review.

Sayulita Sucker by Craig Terlson
In this story, set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, you’ll visit back alleys and dicey neighborhoods not featured in any guidebook. Luke Fischer barrels through the pages as unstoppable as a locomotive. He’s not always polite, prefers beer to wine, and raises a dust storm wherever he goes. Yet, he has an uncanny knack for finding missing people. This time, his client is a man whose teenager daughter has disappeared. Full review here.

Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman
The acclaimed author’s first cozy mystery is a delight. Muriel Blossom, widowed and newly wealthy, has planned her first trip to Europe—Paris and a splurgy river cruise. You might suspect that Lippman has an older auntie or family friend who inspired her to so perfectly create open-hearted, naïve Mrs. Blossom. From the first page, you’ll peg her as the inevitable victim of an assortment of solicitous character. Read the full review.

reading, apple

A (Fictional) Trip to Japan

Posted on by

The art, architecture, and traditions of the Land of the Rising Sun have always fascinated me, which gives the backdrops of these stories added pleasure.

The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni

How you feel about puzzles will likely color your reaction to Danielle Trussoni’s new thriller, a follow-on to her well-received 2023 book, The Puzzle Master. I love puzzles, included a puzzle box in my mystery-thriller, Architect of Courage, and thought I’d found the perfect read.

Mike Brink is a New York City puzzle creator who suffered a brain injury that left him with the extremely rare “acquired savant” syndrome. Savants have extraordinary cognitive abilities in a single field. For Mike Brink, it’s solving puzzles, along with the supporting mathematics. Life and relationships aren’t easy for him and, interestingly, Mike would prefer to be less “special.”

The Imperial family has asked a US-raised young Japanese woman, Sakura Nakamoto, to convince Mike to try to open the Dragon Puzzle Box, a feat attempted in secret only every twelve years. Renowned puzzle experts have tried and failed, and failure is fatal.

In Japan, a woman named Ume is training a small cadre of young women to be warriors as ruthless as herself, female samurai. They believe whatever is hidden in the Dragon Puzzle Box can restore the samurai to power. Meanwhile, another powerful antagonist also wants the Box’s contents, in order to pursue one of those “fate of the world hangs in the balance” missions that strain my credulity. Even if Mike can open the Box without dying in the process, the dangers will be only just beginning.

I like the elements of Japanese culture that Trussoni includes in this tale. She lived several years in Japan and the story environment certainly carries the feel of authenticity. A “foreign” setting is almost always extra exciting, simply because the rules are different there, and they are very different indeed in the Imperial court setting!

The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

No doubt Christie, Chandler, Sayers, Hammett, and their brethren would be quite comfortable reading this story, inspired by Golden Age traditions, the fourth of the author’s Bizarre House Mysteries.

The house of prominent Japanese mystery writer Miyagaki Yōtarō was constructed as a giant labyrinth (maps are helpfully provided to the guests—and readers). For his sixtieth birthday, he plans a celebration involving talented young writers he has mentored, his editor/critic Utayama Hideyuki, and mystery fan Shimada Kiyoshi.

The arriving guests meet Miyagaki’s secretary who makes the astonishing revelation that their host, dying of cancer, has committed suicide. Miyagaki’s posthumous instructions ask them not to call the police for five days and not to try to leave. He also asks the four authors to use the days to write the best detective story they can, which Utayama and Shimada will judge. The winner will receive half of Miyagaki’s considerable estate. Initially nonplussed, the writers quickly rally and commit to the project. Thus, you have a classic locked-room mystery. It doesn’t tax your imagination to guess the partygoers will begin dropping like flies.

Utayama and Shimada take the lead in investigating, but neither can be sure the other isn’t the mysterious killer. Most puzzling is that the positioning of each body and the cause of death mimics the newly deceased’s draft story.

I learned less about Japanese culture than I might have expected and quite a bit more about the personalities of ambitious authors than I might have wanted. Miyagaki well understood what he was dealing with when he set up this unusual challenge. Each murder necessitates a lengthy deconstruction of the surrounding events, the location of other guests at the probable time of the crime, and its relation to the story begun on their word processors. It begins to feel like an overlong unravelling, but all points to a classic fair-play conclusion. Will you figure it out before Utayama and Shimada do?

The March of Television

Posted on by

This spring promises several new television seasons and series that should be worth watching. But first, let me praise the extremely quirky Interior Chinatown, which we’ve watched over the last few months. It’s based on a 2020 novel by Charles Yu, which won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. A couple of episodes in, I realized I’d actually read this book. I did not get it at all. My reaction: “Huh?”

But someone must have, and the transition to the small screen is terrific. Jimmy O. Yang plays Willis Wu, a background character in a police drama set in a fictional city. His parents, especially his mom, have some hilarious moments, as does his fellow waiter, Fatty Choi, who thrives on insulting the restaurant’s customers. The plot is essentially indescribable, but Wu is on a quest to find out what happened to his older brother, whom the TV show calls “Kung Fu Guy.” Many hilarious and heartfelt moments. Watch it on Hulu.

On TV this spring, I’m looking forward to the televised version of Liz Moore’s Long Bright River, a book I enjoyed immensely. In it, a cop who works in Philadelphia’s rough Kensington neighborhood, scene of a series of prostitute murders, never escapes the fear that one day what she’ll find is the body of her renegade sister. Amanda Seyfried plays the police officer, Mickey Fitzpatrick. Excellent family interactions in the novel; I hope they’re preserved. Coming on Peacock March 13.

Damian Lewis will reprise his role as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the third book in the late Hilary Mantel’s riveting series about Tudor political shenanigans involving the King, Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), and Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce). The books were great, and the acting in this series, first aired in 2015 as Wolf Hall, is exceptional. Wolf Hall was the ancestral home of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, the one (out of eight) he presumably most loved. It’s premiering March 23 on PBS.

Another season of Dark Winds arrives March 9 on AMC. This crime series, set on Arizona’s Navajo reservation, is based on Tony Hillerman’s popular books featuring Sheriff Joe Leaphorn and his deputy Jim Chee. Leaphorn is played by Zahn McClarnon, an actor I came to admire in the Longmire series, and Chee by Kiowa Gordon. The rest of the mostly Native American cast is also strong. And you can’t beat the beautifully stark Southwestern landscape.

I’ll also give a try to the British detective drama Ludwig, which aired on the BBC in 2024, but will be available on BritBox starting March 20. The title character (played by actor-comedian David Mitchell) is a puzzle-maker, and Ludwig is his pen name. His identical twin brother (I know, I know, beware of twins) is a Cambridge police DCI who’s gone missing. Ludwig poses as his brother to get access to police information about the disappearance. He is, of course, taken for the detective, and becomes caught up in the department’s investigations. Puzzle-solving should come in handy.

Not Paranormal, Just Different

Posted on by

An interesting recent discussion between two indigenous American authors got me thinking about the issue of paranormal. (And, not for the first time, wondering what’s “normal,” anyway, in these times?) Some elements in the books of Ramona Emerson of the Diné (Navaho) tribe and Marcie Rendon, a member of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa (Ojibwe)—both multiple literary award-winners, by the way—might fit into a broad paranormal category, but they reject that characterization.

Emerson is the author of two books in her series featuring Rita Todacheene a forensic photographer, able to see in her mind the circumstances of the crimes she is meticulously documenting. (Find her remarkable books here and here.) Rendon, who is also a playwright and poet, writes the popular Cash Blackbear crime series, featuring a young Ojibwe woman, whose guardian is a sheriff, which brings her into occasional contact with violent crime. The fourth book in Rendon’s series, Broken Fields, will be available March 2025. Blackbear’s visions and intuitive abilities help in solving crimes, and the author explores the problem of missing and murdered indigenous women. In both authors’ books, you find a rich source of information and perspective on the protagonists’ cultural milieu.

In a recent webinar, Emerson interviewed Rendon, and they mentioned the “paranormal” issue. Publishers and agents when musing about what they’re looking for in manuscript submissions today increasingly mention their attraction to paranormal elements. It’s not clear exactly what they have in mind. But it is something both women claim to not write. They haven’t decided to paste on some not easily explained or supernatural element. “It’s just part of who we are,” Rendon said, “a different belief system.” In it, dreams are important, she said, and they discuss them each morning. In my dream last night, I was looking for something I couldn’t find—typical!

Her character Cash Blackbear’s visions let her see beyond objective reality. In the Ojibwe culture, such thinking is part-and-parcel of daily existence. In part, that’s because the wisdom of the ancestors guides them through life, and people talk to and “see” their ancestors frequently. And not only because they are “surrounded by spirit houses” (little houses built atop graves mounds). Despite these frequent contacts, interactions with ancestors or the spirit world are done within certain parameters, certain specific rules. Personally, I’d like to understand more.

Naturally, because this is such a different way of thinking, acceptance is hard for people raised in a culture that emphasizes rationality and scientific proof as the keys to understanding the world. From the inside, as Emerson portrays Rita Todacheene, this different way is also hard to simply dismiss.

Another recent book that draws on this type of thinking is Jennifer Givhan’s 2023 novel, River Woman, River Demon. Givhan is a Mexican-American and indigenous author whose story weaves together the otherworldly and the everyday swirling around a murder. It isn’t a novel I would ordinarily gravitate to, but Givhan made it a powerful story, and I’m glad I read it.

Reaching for my more comfortably familiar analytic hat, I can’t help wondering whether stories like these are achieving resonance in this era when the rational seems to have flown out the window. Maybe people are seeking a little wisdom from unconventional sources to help them get through. But that would be selling these books short. These are compelling tales from a less conventional point of view that deserve to be read and thought about in any time period.

Take-Aways

Posted on by

In a post last week based in part on an interview with award-winning author Laura van den Berg, she talked about the strangeness we encounter in daily life. Some people may see mysteries in that strangeness, some see the workings of the supernatural, and some just pass right by, eyes glued to cell phone. Now that’s strange! The current Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine includes a number of stories that anticipate Halloween and the different ways people react to such hard-to-explain happenings.

Strangeness and ambiguity are useful tools in fiction, not just at Halloween. In real life, friendships may suddenly end, marriages dissolve, and we may not know why—even when we’re one of the principals. Conversely, the things that keep a relationship going can be equally puzzling.

To van den Berg, the ambiguity in a story can be either positive or negative. Even when a story doesn’t provide all the answers, she says, “it should give [readers] something to take away.” Inexperienced writers, trying to achieve a sense of mystery, may under-explain, running the risk of merely creating confusion and giving their readers nothing to latch onto. It’s equally off-putting when authors over-explain. Trust your readers to figure many things out. A friend used to write sentences like, “He threw the plate against the wall because he was angry.” Clearly, the “because” clause is completely unnecessary. “She spent an hour on her makeup because she wanted to look her best.” Ditto.

A story’s ending is an important contributor to what the reader will take from it. Van den Berg’s approach to finding the endings of her stories doesn’t sound like a huge assembly of 3 x 5 cards and post-its. Nor does she flail around trying to discover the ending in a morass of prose. Instead, she says she often sees the ending as “an image of some kind.” She may not initially see all the action steps (plot) that will get her there, but she’s moving toward it, through the fog of creation, following the glow of a distant light.

In the mystery/crime/thriller genre, an ending is likely to be unsatisfying if it leaves too many mysteries unsolved, too many loose ends. When I’m writing, I keep a list of unresolved story questions. They may be tangible issues such as, How does Evie know Carl has a peanut allergy? Or less tangible ones, like, If Steve really loves Diana, why did he have an affair?

I don’t have to work out an answer to them the moment they come up (an invitation to backstory that derails the flow), but when I arrive at the end, I check my list. Are all the questions that can be answered with a fact addressed in some logical and preferably unobtrusive way? Have the intangible questions at least been considered by the character? It isn’t necessary that readers completely believe a character’s explanations, but they should be confident the character believes them, at least at some level. A frequent and annoying cop-out is the phrase, “he had no choice but to . . .” following which the author steers the character into some plot-necessary action. Of course there were choices, and it is the writer who made one. Slightly better is when characters say, “I had no choice . . .” Yes, you recognize they’re probably just rationalizing. Weakly. Unpersuasively. Which of itself says something about them.

You may recall that one of the necessaries of a short story is “it needs to have a point.” That doesn’t mean a political point, or a hit-them-over-the-head-with-a-hammer point. It’s more subtle, something that grounds the stories despite and because of life’s mysteries. Irish author Anne Enright said it well, “Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.” You, the writer, are the rock in a sea of ambiguity.

The Serpent Dance

Posted on by

With Sofia Slater’s latest crime mystery, you have not only an intriguing whodunnit, but, although it’s set in contemporary times, The Serpent Dance feels like a trip back in time to the era when Cornish midsummer revelries first involved bonfires, iconic music, river offerings, and the creation of wicker animals, later consumed by the ritual fire. Slater draws on the persistence of these ancient practices, mixing the traditional and the modern in ways that occasionally baffle her protagonist.

London graphic designer Audrey Delaney’s boyfriend of ten months, Noah, has planned a surprise getaway for them. She’s convinced herself (and prematurely told all her friends) that he’s taking her to Paris. When it turns out they’re headed to the fictional Cornish village of Trevennick, she tries not to show her disappointment, but Noah realizes he’s missed the mark.

From there, their situation goes from bad to much, much worse. Their B&B is a modern, glass-walled home overlooking the river. Inside, it’s open-plan carried to an extreme. Their landlady will be staying in the master bedroom, with just a wisp of separation between her and the guest bedroom.

Their hostess is a renowned television personality, and Noah takes to her with unexpected enthusiasm. Something isn’t right. Why this place? What’s Noah’s real agenda? Why his interest in this older woman? The twisting lines of the eponymous serpent dance itself can’t compare to the secrets Audrey is about to discover.

No need to worry be jealous of their hostess, though, because before morning she lies dead in a pool of blood, a knife to her throat. The police initially consider it a suicide, but elements of the crime scene simply don’t add up. Since Audrey and Noah are the only other people in the house, and since anyone else padding about could not do so without risking being seen (all those glass walls), police attention is on them. On Noah, particularly.

The town is preparing for the midsummer Golowan festivities, masks and wicker obby orses everywhere. It’s a deeply local tradition and outsiders aren’t especially welcome, especially when the shadow of murder has fallen on them.

Though Noah is tucked away in jail, their hostess’s isn’t the only body to turn up. Audrey tackles her predicament in the way she tries to work through any difficult circumstance, by drawing, and the realism of her depiction of Stella’s corpse, among other local characters is inevitably misunderstood. It’s a classic case of being out of one’s own element. This profoundly unsettling atmosphere makes Audrey anxious about the wrong things, so that she doesn’t recognize the danger to herself.

I found the mix of past and present, culture and calamity quite captivating. Nice job, Sofia Slater! Order your copy here.

Murder Takes a Holiday

Posted on by
cruise ship

A new issue in editor Janet Rudolph’s excellent Mystery Readers Journal, in which mystery and crime authors talk about what inspired them to write about a particular theme, setting, or domain and how they went about doing it. There’s a certain commonality to some sources of inspiration, but there are always those fascinating quirky bits. Some of the authors that are most interesting to me draw on a vast well of knowledge, experience, and research, so that it sometimes seems they could make a valuable contribution to almost any MRJ issue!

I was tremendously amused by the cover drawing for Summer 2024 (which is Volume 40, No. 2), “Murder Takes a Holiday.” It features the Grim Reaper, ensconced in a deck chair with a cocktail and a book (yay!), while a puzzled cruise passenger looks on. “Taking a holiday” for sure. One hopes.

In Donna Andrews’s essay “Monkey Business Meets the Flying Dutchman,” she points out the value of actually visiting the place or having (some aspect of) the experience you’re writing about. She wanted to write a locked room mystery involving a cruise, but had never been on one. Easy solution: book it! Though she soon found out the crew wasn’t very forthcoming when she asked her questions about crime aboard and missing persons. “They tended to look panic-stricken and find an excuse to sneak away whenever I asked,” she says.

All this reminded me of a recent conversation with friends about the number of people who actually do go missing from cruise ships every year—the very topic the crew of Andrews’s ship avoided. Their mantra: Cruises are fun! They’re exciting! (But not in that way.)

I knew nothing about the missing cruiser phenomenon until a few years ago when I reviewed Sebastian Fitzek’s thriller, Passenger 23, for CrimeFictionLover.com. His premise of a serial killer disposing of cruise ship passengers struck me at first as an eye-roller. Then I did some research. At that time, an estimated 23 people a year—passengers and crew members alike—disappeared from the world’s cruise ships.

That number was widely viewed as an underestimate, because of the cruise shop operators’ public relations imperative to keep such incidents under wraps. They also encourage the narrative that disappearances are suicides, though often there is no evidence of that, or even contrary evidence.

Investigation is often left to a police official from the ship’s country-of-registry. For Carnival Cruises, that would be Panama, and possibly the Bahamas or Malta, where Celebrity Cruises also are registered. Disney? The Bahamas. The initial investigation and autopsy for a woman who died on a Carnival ship in 2023 was conducted by Bahamian authorities. They concluded it was a natural death, but the FBI considered it suspicious and began its own investigation some days after-the-fact, when the ship docked in Charleston.

In a case of presumed suicide from a Royal Caribbean ship late last month, the company is being fairly close-mouthed. Said a lawyer who investigates such incidents, “It’s rare for a company to publish anything that could make them seem liable for the death”—including issues like alcohol consumption.

These incentives and circumstances create the perfect set-up for deadly shenanigans. The Mystery Readers Journal cover artist apparently thought so too!

(photo: ed2456 on pixabay; creative commons license)